College Coaching Development

College Coaching Development OverviewThere has never been a more important time in the history of intercollegiate sports for coaches to have solid CEO skills. Whereas 30 years ago or so, all most coaches had to do is teach the technical and tactical aspects of the sport. Today, coaches have to be proficient communicators, fundraisers, marketers/promoters, organizers, and much more to entrench/protect their programs. Further, it is imperative that all intercollegiate wrestling teams are closely aligned with educational values (i.e. maintaining solid eligibility and graduation rates, ensuring a strong commitment to community service, developing life skills in athletes, promoting sportsmanship and citizenship, etc.).

So, the NWCA, through its comprehensive CEO Leadership Training program, has emerged as a premier leader in coaching development. The curriculum was developed by internationally renowned coaching development expert, Dr. Dan Gould at Michigan State University in collaboration with many of our season veteran coaches, administrators, and business leaders. In fact, we are so committed to strengthening the CEO skills of coaches and/or enhancing our sport’s alignment with educational values that we provide a minimum of 60 full scholarships each year for deserving coaches to complete this training. Since 2009, over 200 head and assistant college coaches have completed our curriculum.

One of the cornerstones of the Leadership Academy is an aggressive approach to maintaining high standards for eligibility/graduation rates of our wrestlers. The NWCA has retained the services of several very skilled academic consultants who are available to provide FREE guidance and ongoing support to any college coach who asks. As a result, NCAA D-I wrestling programs have enjoyed some of the greatest improvement (compared to all other sports) on eligibility/graduation rates.

The other important cornerstone of the CEO Leadership Academy is the marketing kit. This turn-key marketing kit was developed by nationally renowned sports marketing expert, Dr. Coyte Cooper at University of North Carolina and is designed to substantially grow our spectator base at the institutional level. The marketing kit has been made available for FREE to all college coaches through the generosity of numerous NWCA benefactors. In the event a coach does not have the marketing expertise and/or the time, the marketing concepts in this kit can be easily executed by any capable student intern.

The results of these aggressive and innovative coaching development initiatives speak for themselves. Over the past decade, 82 new intercollegiate wrestling programs have been added after having lost over 450 in the previous 30 years. A growing number of these new programs are coaches by Leadership Academy graduates. We are beginning to see coaches deploy intentional strategies to market, promote, and brand their programs with tools that have been made easily accessible to them by the NWCA.

On behalf of the NWCA Board of Directors, we want to thank all of the content experts and consultants who have so generously donated their time and expertise to make all of this possible!